I guess this is the part of the season where my interest in the final score really starts diverging from my interest in the outcomes of particular players on the field. On one hand, Jose Tabata had five great plate appearances and reached base three times and stole a base while Neil Walker added a couple of hits, Andrew McCutchen hit a few balls on the nose, and Brad Lincoln seemed to settle in nicely after a rough start. On the other hand, the Pirates played terribly in the field (despite what the scorebook says it’s hard to think of the three runs that Lincoln gave up in the fourth inning as “earned”) and couldn’t string together the big hits they needed and lost a game that they probably should’ve won.
Neither Lincoln nor Tabata were overwhelming impressive in their debuts last night, as Tabata’s hits were infield hits and Lincoln gave up a bunch of hard-hit balls, but neither seemed terribly overwhelmed by the experience, either. Lincoln’s most impressive inning was the fifth, which came after some shoddy fielding lead to a three-run fourth for the Nats and their 2-3-4 hitters came up. Lincoln bore down and after inducing a Nyjer Morgan pop-up, struck out Ryan Zimmerman and Adam Dunn. That’s good stuff. Tabata’s best two at-bats may have been the eight-pitch walk he grinded out in the fifth and the six pitch battle with Tyler Clippard that ended with a hard-hit flyout in the eighth. Both guys stood their ground tonight and frankly, that was all I really wanted to see. The loss is disappointing, but it ultimately seems unimportant compared to Lincoln and Tabata’s debuts.
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